


Convalescence

by Viemars



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fluff, Inspirational Speeches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-10
Updated: 2012-06-10
Packaged: 2017-11-07 10:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/430277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viemars/pseuds/Viemars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An injury leads to Shepard being rushed to Huerta Memorial Hospital. While she's unconscious, her crew take it upon themselves to find her a special gift. It gets each of them thinking about Shepard's dedication to them when they have been in hospital beds themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Convalescence

**Author's Note:**

> My first fanfic in about a decade, I think? I would love to hear what people think of it!

When Samantha Traynor felt a hand on her shoulder, she went from fast asleep to wide awake in an instant.

"Shepard?" She breathed, with a surge of hope, suddenly upright and alert. But the Commander was still unconscious in the hospital bed, her chest rising and falling gently. It was the middle of the afternoon, but Traynor hadn't been able to get much sleep since the Commander's injury and she had drifted off sitting at Shepard's side. She obscured her disappointment as she turned to see that the hand was attached to Garrus.

"Sorry, Specialist. I just thought you might like to know that we've... taken our little requisitions issue to the next stage," Garrus said.

Traynor patted down her dishevelled hair as he spoke. "Oh?"

"Cortez is talking to the embassy receptionists about it."

The Specialist's hands fell away from her head. "Are you serious?"

Garrus' mandibles twitched in a small smile. "Oh, yes. Come on, it'll do you good to stretch your legs. And you know you won't want to miss it."

Traynor got to her feet, and followed Garrus out of the room, and away from Huerta Memorial. This was the third day Shepard had been there after getting herself trapped in close combat with a Cerberus phantom. The Normandy's mission had more or less drawn to a halt during that time, and they were grounded. It was pleasant for the crew to have some impromptu shore leave, but a small group of Shepard's personal friends had been occupied with a particular job of their own.

As they approached Cortez, he was standing at the front of a long line, his palms resting on the desk. Jack was standing to one side of him, and Kaidan Alenko to the other. "I'm aware that it's unusual, ma'am, but--" Cortez was saying.

"I'm sorry, sir, there are no supply lines from Earth." The asari receptionist replied. Traynor and Garrus fell in beside Cortez, ignoring the muttering from the queue behind them.

"No, I know that," Cortez said, "But it occurs to me that there may be some stockpiles that somebody of your administrative influence may be able to access? We're willing to pay all expenses involved, of course."

The receptionist sighed. It seemed her patience was being tested. "I don't think so, sir. And as you might imagine, the influence you're referring to gives me a lot of responsibilities, and getting this Earth fruit for you is frankly not very high up my list. I'm sorry, but we are in a war, sir."

Garrus stepped forward and addressed the receptionist himself. "The woman we want the fruit for - the woman currently lying in a hospital bed after being injured in action, may I add - is the one who is going to win this war."

The asari cast her arms wide in a helpless shrug. "That may well be, but given that she hasn't won the war yet, the supply lines are still closed. Earth delicacies are not a priority. There is nothing I can do about it. What's so important about this fruit, anyway?"

Garrus looked over his shoulder at the people gathered around him. Traynor followed his gaze. An Alliance technician, a Spectre, a heavily-inked biotics teacher and an ex-C-sec turian weren't the typical escort for a requisitions officer. And yet here they all were. Shepard had that effect on people.

 

*

"Lieutenant?" Kaidan Alenko had been dreaming of Gunnery Chief Williams, and he had imagined that the voice that woke him was hers. It was strange, he had thought, coming up slowly from the depths of sleep. Normally she would call him LT.

But then he had opened his eyes, and seen Shepard there, her face drawn and tired, and he remembered. Williams was gone. He had never thought twice about her nickname for him before, but suddenly, the idea that nobody would ever call him LT again seemed a loss that was almost unbearable.

Shepard eased herself into the chair next to him in the medical bay. The drive core of the SR-1 vibrated gently and reassuringly through the bed. He looked over in time to see Dr. Chakwas discretely exiting, leaving only the two of them in the clinic.

"Commander. Hey." They sat in silence for a moment. Kaidan tried to think of something to talk to her about, but it all seemed so pathetically trivial he could have cried right then and there. They had broken fraternisation rules, and Shepard had had to make a choice, and she had chosen him, and now Ashley Williams was dead. That was it. What was there to say, now? How could there ever be anything to say again?

Shepard cleared her throat. "Dr. Chakwas says you'll be ready to go again with another day or two of rest, so that's good. I, er... I brought you something." She handed him a paper bag. He took it and looked inside.

He lifted his eyebrows. "Wow. I haven't seen grapes since last time I took shore leave in the tropics of Earth. Thanks," He added, limply.

"Yeah, well," Shepard said, not meeting his gaze. "I ordered them specially. I thought... You know, it's appropriate, isn't it? When somebody's convalescing, you bring them grapes?"

Kaidan forced a smile. "Right."

They sat in silence for another long moment. At last, he saw Shepard give a tiny shake of her head. She looked defeated. She had survived hell in her military career and come out on top. She had won out against platoons of geth and hordes of mercenaries, and yet here she was, beaten by this silence between them. She stood up. "I should go," she said softly.

"Right," Kaidan repeated, feeling powerless. He watched her head towards the door, and was suddenly grasped by the urgent realisation that he couldn't let her leave like that.

"Shepard?" He called after her. She paused close to the door, and turned to see him again. He took a deep breath. "I don't know how we're going to get past this, but I think we should do our best. I think we're... I mean, I think you're... you're quite something, you know, Shepard? You're something I'm willing to fight for, even though I'm not sure how I'm going to do it yet." He paused for a moment. Her face was inscrutable. "I mean, we're on a ship several thousand lightyears from Earth, and somehow you've brought me grapes," He added, with a small smile.

Shepard gave only a slight inclination of her head before she turned and left, but the gesture did a lot to put Kaidan's mind at ease.

 

*

Shepard came to see Garrus wearing her civilian clothes, though her hair was still drawn back in a tight military ponytail. He shifted himself into a more upright position in the bed as she stood at the foot of it, picking up the OSD of his medical notes and browsing through them briefly.

"Feeling alright?" She asked. Her voice was friendly, but he noticed that she wasn't smiling. She'd hardly smiled since they had been reunited on Omega, actually.

"Much better. Whatever the procedure was that Chakwas did this morning, it's worked wonders. It hardly hurts any more." He lifted a hand to gently touch the side of his face over the dressing. It did feel more robust, somehow.

"Great." Shepard didn't look up from the OSD.

"I've never seen you in your civvies before, Commander," he said conversationally.

Shepard's eyes flicked up to meet his briefly. He thought that he had become relatively attuned to human facial expressions, but he wasn't sure if he caught a fleeting grimace there. "Yes, well." She put the OSD down and pulled up a stool. "I'm not about to go dressing in Cerberus gear, and I can hardly wear my Alliance fatigues now, can I?"

Garrus knew she loved the Alliance, but it hadn't occurred to him that such a small detail as off-duty uniform would have grown so important in her eyes. He cast around for a subject to move onto that might be less of a sore spot for her.

"I noticed you brought Alenko some fruit that time he got injured on Virmire. I was hoping I might get some myself. Or is that a special privilege, only for those crew members who double as private entertainment?"

The corners of Shepard's mouth finally registered some amusement. "Damnit, Vakarian. Did everybody on the SR-1 know about Alenko and I?"

Garrus' mandibles twitched playfully. "Well. I'm not sure anybody _knew_ , but we all suspected. I'm surprised he's not still here with you, actually."

Shepard's face darkened again, and she leaned forward, folding her arms on the bed. "Really? You're surprised he's not working with Cerberus?" She didn't look up at him. "In any case, we were effectively over for some time before the SR-1 was destroyed. We tried not to let any conflict between us communicate to the crew, but... well. It was Virmire that did it, really. We could never get past..." Ashley's death. Garrus could complete the sentence in his head, but Shepard didn't seem to be able to say the words. The was a pause before she went on. "We gave it a good go, of course."

"I wouldn't have expected anything else from the two of you," Garrus said.

"There was even a night before Ilos when I felt sure that it was going to work out for us." Shepard was looking at her hands, folded on the bed in front of her. Garrus watched her long eyelashes twitching almost imperceptibly. "I thought, if we can get through Saren and the geth together, we can get through anything. But I was wrong, of course. The night before you think you might die isn't the hardest time, it's the easiest. Everything is so immediate then, so visceral. You don't allow yourself to look at the future so it's as though all you have is the present moment."

"That's not a good thing?" Garrus inquired.

"At the time, maybe it is. And if it really turns out to be your last night, it's probably a good way to have spent it. The problem comes later, when you've got through hell and come back in one piece, and you realise that the rest of your life is going to happen after all. When you look up from the present moment to see the expanse of time stretching out ahead of you, and all the old problems are still there, casting longer shadows than ever."

Garrus had nothing to say to this, but she didn't seem to require a response from him. They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, then Shepard stood up. "Anyway, what do you want grapes for? You can't even eat them."

Garrus had recovered and was back in action again when Shepard came to see him a few days later. He was working on the Normandy's munitions array, lying on his back on the ground. He had spent several hours trying to replace part of the chassis that he had taken off on the bottom of one of the control panels, but the space beneath the panel was too small to manoeuvre his elbows in, and he kept fumbling with his tools.

"Is this a bad time?" Shepard asked, crouching beside him.

Garrus clicked his mandibles in frustration, and drew himself out from under the control panel, sitting up. "No, it's a perfect time. You arrived only moments before I was about to lose it and just start kicking the damned thing. What's that you've got there?" He nodded at a bowl she was holding.

"Grapes," Shepard replied, holding the bowl out to him. For a moment, it was just a word that he could recall no definition for. "The Earth fruit that I brought for Alenko that time?" She added helpfully.

"You're kidding me." Garrus took the bowl and examined them. He couldn't help but laugh. "Shepard, I was joking. You didn't have to get me these. You were right, I can't even eat them."

"Be that as it may," She said, pushing herself to her feet and dusting off her palms, "I pride myself on treating all members of my crew equally, regardless of their species." One of her eyebrows arched playfully.

He picked one of the grapes from the bunch and rolled it between his fingers. "You know, there are plenty of dextro-based alternatives you could have brought," he said dryly.

"You're an ungrateful wretch, Vakarian," Shepard said with a fond smile, then nodded down at the control panel. "I'm a bit smaller than you. Want me to see if I can get under there?"

*

"Fuck it all, Shepard," Jack kicked the blanket off her and to the foot of the bed. Shepard looked up from the OSD she was reading.

"What is it now?" The Commander asked indulgently. She was tilted back in Dr. Chakwas' reclining chair, her ankles resting on the foot of Jack's bed.

"Are you actually trying to kill your crew members? I'm starving. And injured. I need food to rebuild my strength." She gestured towards where her leg was elevated. The injury had been unpleasant - crushing damage done by debris on the way out of the Collector base – but Dr. Chakwas knew what she was doing, and it was only a matter of time before she would be back on her feet. She didn't like being up here on the busy crew deck, and Shepard's bloody-minded determination to stay by her side was testing her (extremely limited) patience.

"Jack," Shepard said. "In the time it's taken me to read this report you've eaten a cup of noodles, a bag of chips, and that huge bunch of grapes I picked up for you."

"Yeah, well, next time you can forget the fruit and just bring me a huge bunch of steaks. Biotics use up a lot of energy, you know."

Shepard set the OSD down. "Alright, alright. I'll get Gardner to whip something up for you."

"It would be fine if you hadn't made me hold that fucking godawful barrier against all those bug things," Jack said as Shepard got to her feet. "I don't see why it had to be me. I bet if you'd got anyone else to do it, they'd be too pussy to have their CO scurrying around getting them food."

"I can see you have no such reservations, Jack." Shepard observed, taking the hair tie out of her ponytail and redoing it. "And why wouldn't I have chosen you? You're probably the best human biotic in the galaxy."

"What, you think you can pacify me with flattery, Shepard? I still say you should have got the cheerleader to do it. I'm sure she would have managed. She's supposed to be the prize cow, after all, genetically speaking. And there's the added bonus that if the exertion had killed her, nobody would have been too upset."

"Right. If you hadn't been there, I'm sure I could have trusted Miranda with that role, or Samara, and maybe we would have been fine. But I'm glad it was you. And not just because of your greater biotic potential."

"Shepard, I swear to god, if you're launching into another inspirational speech..."

"I knew that holding that barrier was going to be difficult," Shepard ignored Jack's interruption. "Very difficult. I knew that it would be easy for a biotic to collapse the field enough to cover only themselves, if it came to that – to cut and run, and leave the rest of the team to the swarms. I needed somebody I knew would get to the point when they couldn't hold the barrier a second longer, and yet find it in themselves to keep on holding. And that's what you've been doing your whole goddamned life, Jack. Don't tell me I should have made a different choice."

Jack shrugged. "I could've just decided I didn't care enough about you and your little friends to keep it up," she said.

"And yet we're still here. What am I to infer from that?"

Jack waved her hand. "Whatever. Where's my steak, girl scout?"

 

*

 

The first thing that Traynor saw as the anaesthetic wore off was Shepard's face, and she felt where their hands touched before she felt how dry her throat was.

"Morning," Shepard said, and passed Traynor a glass of water. She took it and drank some groggily. The lines of traffic over the Presidium filed past the window of Huerta memorial, silent through the thick glass.

"How did it go?" Traynor asked in a hoarse voice.

"No problems," Shepard replied. "I told you there wouldn't be. I'm sure the doctor takes out appendixes in her sleep."

"A horrifying image," Traynor said with a drowsy smile. "And isn't it appendices?"

Shepard laughed. Traynor started laughing, but the way her stomach contracted sent a sharp pain through her from the surgical wound, and she stopped.

"My throat hurts," she rasped.

"Here. Maybe these will help." Shepard picked up a plastic punnet of grapes and passed them to Traynor.

"Wow! Commander--"

"We discussed this, Sam. You don't have to call me Commander in private." Shepard interrupted.

"Right. Sorry. Anyway, I used to love these during my time in Oxford. They were hard to get on Horizon, though."

"Well, it turns out some of the higher echelons of Citadel society have a taste for them, and import them in cryogenic storage from Earth. It's quite amazing, really. Expensive, but they taste like they're fresh off the vine."

Traynor picked one of the grapes and bit into its succulent flesh. "Mm! Oh, wow. These just don't grow the same in the colonies. How did you know they were my favourite?"

Shepard smiled. "Actually, I didn't. It's sort of a tradition for when my crew members get injured. I guess someone had to like them eventually."

Traynor lay back down in the bed. She fingered the surgical dressing gingerly through her hospital gown. "I can't believe you stayed here while I had my surgery. You've got Reapers to fight."

"Actually, having some downtime on the Citadel is helpful to keep discussions with the Council alive. Besides, the Normandy can't fly without her Specialist. She'll fall apart."

"But even so, you're still here when you didn't have to be." Traynor let her warm, brown eyes slip closed. "It's a bit scary, really." A short, nervous laugh escaped her.

"Scary?" Shepard inquired.

"Don't you..." Traynor started, and sighed, looking back up at Shepard. "Are we doing a bad thing, here, Commander? I mean, the Alliance has rules against fraternisation for a reaso--"

"I know." Shepard's voice was dark as she cut in. Something in her tone made Traynor stop. "Believe me, Sam, I know. I've done fraternisation wrong before. I won't be making those kinds of mistakes again." Shepard stood up, and walked over to the window. Traynor stared at her back. She looked so graceful, silhouetted against the outside light.

"I've led a violent life," Shepard said at length. Her voice was gentle now. "The kind of life that can give someone a violent mind. But when I'm with you, Sam, everything is peaceful. It's like... walking out of a loud party into the night and letting a soundproofed door fall shut behind you." Shepard turned around, folding her arms and leaning back against the window. She regarded Traynor levelly. "I've never had that with anyone before. It's never been so... so clean, so pared down to simple happiness."

"Right," The Specialist said. "Well, I guess if you say something's okay, there's not a person in this galaxy who's going to argue with you, Commander."

Shepard gave a melancholy smile. "Heh. I wish that were true." She sighed, and moved over to the bed. Traynor shifted over a little to allow the Commander to kneel on the bed at her side. She bent over and kissed her on the lips. "What did I tell you, Sam? Stop calling me Commander. You know what? Go wild, call me by my first name. You'll be the first person in years," Shepard said dryly, as she ran her hand, fingers spread, down the curves of Traynor's body. Traynor did as she was told.

 

*

 

The asari receptionist regarded the strange group before her for a long, silent moment. "By the goddess," she said finally, reaching up to knead her forehead with a slender hand. "Look, go to the agriculture labs. Here, I'll give you clearance to enter. They're pretty rushed at the moment just growing enough staples to feed all the extra mouths we have here, but maybe if you make a large enough donation, it'll offset the costs of growing a bunch of grapes for you. I know, I know, vat-grown isn't perfect," She held up a hand in anticipation of Jack's protestations, "But it's the best you're going to get, unless you want to fly to Earth and pick some yourself."

 

*

 

It was another two days before Shepard woke, slowly, her mind hazy with painkillers. Her room was darkened, and silent but for the placid whirring of the medical machines and the soft sigh of Traynor's breath. The dim light from her vital signs monitor was enough to highlight the table that stood at the end of her bed. The table was empty but for a large bowl in the centre, spilling over with succulent grapes.

Shepard smiled and let her head sink back down into her pillows.


End file.
